You mean you didn't create giveaways week ago just to post this bluff?
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Well, as you can see, I did seven of those to just post this bluff. I wondered how long people fall for a bluff and how much higher I have to raise the bluff to still get some reaction. Pretty damn high. SG users should play poker.
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I mean you have private giveaways running so there must be some hidden puzzle here... I just know it ;D
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The only conclusion I can draw from your experiments is that you have too much free time on your hands.
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Didn't take more than 20 minutes per giveaway and an hour or so to come up with the basics and most of the execution plan. All I had to do was to make sure to drop the invite-only links a little after the giveaways started.
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HEY! I spent, like, 5' (more? less? who knows..) looking for that non-existent Witness code! >_<!
I agree that the description wasn't very clear though =P
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Meh, i just can't be bothered with the clicking anymore. Same with sgtools.
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I don't like puzzles and will actively avoid them on this forum - which is good as it gives others more chance :P
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Quit playing games with my head.
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The more information, the more room for confusion, especially with a large number of the SG user base not being native English speakers. The only conclusion I take from that is, that more people than one would expect, remember you as a person and your convictions/experiments ;>, and thus were suspicious of what you were up to again :P.
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The moral? Try to believe simple statements a little bit more, so when someone says there is nothing to see there, maybe you should realise that there really isn't anything to see there.
In what world of logic would this typically be true? If there is "nothing to see here" then having nothing there at all (no statement) is evidence enough. However, stating it is classic misdirection and generally implies there is something to see there. It is acting unnatural
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Sometimes it is. But if you walk up to me, extend a cigar, and say "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", I'm going to be suspicious of that cigar because you're acting unnaturally.
If you say something like "Good luck!", I wouldn't think to look for anything hidden. If you say, "There are no hidden giveaways here. Do not look at the source code trying to find hidden giveaways," I'm going to think that there's something hidden there, because why else would you feel the need to state something that is normally assumed?
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eh, I figured there was something up, but I was pressed for time last week
I've also found myself less and less willing to go through the effort of dealing with puzzles more and more.
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Hmmm.. takes a a look. Yep, I remember entering the max pain one from the above list. I looked briefly for a hidden code as you mentioned there might be one. Never saw it. Figured that either I don't know what I was looking for or there was none. Ether way was fine. If it was there and was found then more power to those that solved it.
I like puzzles. And I always read the descriptions. I've found many secondary GAs for the same wishlisted game in public GAs leading to invite only GAs of the same game. Love when I find those. Always shocking how big the difference is between number of entrants. And these are not even puzzles.
lol. Wait... I have that tomb raider. It was one of my first steam purchases. I really need to play some of my back log. Ha... I see other great stuff in my lib I need to play too.
And for the record..... keep the experiments coming. Its always interesting reading these kind of posts.
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I have no idea what you're trying to do here except to be a douchebag that wastes people's time. From what I can tell you only baited hate.
Your conclusions are wrong and based on what seems to be some wannabe Tumblr notion of psychology.
Troll threads have more coherent substance than this "experiment", even the "copy/paste"-mockery threads are of higher quality than this.
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Rather lengthy post there for a mere minute. Probably took more to type it out.
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See. You just made a horrible and poorly based conclusion again.
You ask me one thing, then relate my answer to something else.
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The method was simple, I posted giveaways for relatively high-profile games that I knew would gather a decent attention, then posted some interesting descriptions in each, which all followed the same three-way pattern: the giveaway was not a trap, I will not blacklist any entrants, and there are no hidden links in there.
FINALLY I discover what that was all about
Yes, I was among the confused population
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Congrats on playing mind tricks, confusing people, and then starting a thread about it, clearly that wins all of the internets.
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Three… or four people asked me to explain it to them, it was easier to do one thread than copy the same message (assuming I could even find several-week-old ones, since, well, the "thanks" messages may have reduced, but they are far from vanishing, clogging up the giveaway message box).
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It is surprising how much pragmatism, comfort, and time many are willing to sacrifice for a decent-looking chance at free stuff.
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If the prize behind the puzzle is not stated I don't even try to look. Also, those giveaways have 5k+ entries. It's getting harder and harder to win anything without groups.
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I think I've came across the Max Payne one, tried the first letters + source to find something, then nothing came out (no source, letters-code not working for GA / topic) so I just went on like nothing happened :D
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I love how people are complaining that you wasted 1 minute of their time when you made 7 GAs for very good games ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I stumbled upon the Witness one on the mobile app and thought I might want to come back there on the computer with Secret Sniffer, but didn't get the occasion. Wouldn't have spend more than 2 minutes to find a hidden link though. ;)
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But what if this thread is part of the "getting blacklisted experiment"? (ಠ_ಠ)
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The SteamGifts user base is an infinite trove of possibilities in sociology-type experiments, because there are quite a few quirks in it.
For example, since many people love to do puzzles to hide the entrance of some giveaways, a lot of people expect codes everywhere, even when there aren't any.
Similarly, thanks to things like an ever-increasing resentment towards autojoin and similar script and bot users, the site's rather strict punishment system and a FAQ that is barely understandable even in English, many users, even some of the older registrants, seem to be getting a bit paranoid about what they can and cannot do and how they should and should not approach giveaways.
There are more things, but these two were what I decided to crank up a bit and see how people react.
The method was simple, I posted giveaways for relatively high-profile games that I knew would gather a decent attention, then posted some interesting descriptions in each, which all followed the same three-way pattern: the giveaway was not a trap, I will not blacklist any entrants, and there are no hidden links in there. As a decoy, I made actual invite-only giveaways that lasted the exact same timeframe and dropped their links all over the place each week, so there were entries, but the links were not in the limelight.
A simple opening to the series, a description stating that there are no traps, blacklists, or hidden giveaways there. People were somewhat confused, but many were just fooling along. Some remembered though that the week before I posted it, I did create a bunch of point trap giveaway for the bot users, so some suspected shenanigans.
Same deal, only slightly differently worded. More replies, the general same level of mild confusion and interest, but nothing that would really stick with people.
Again, same description with somewhat different wording. A few people noticed it but could not find anything of it, as there really was not anything in it. The general reaction was that less people commented and largely disregarded the description by now.
I changed the description to tell people to not look for giveaways/traps/blacklists. The reverse psychology kinda backfired, because they really did not.
I wanted to introduce some ambiguity in the description by now, moving away from certain disclaimers to "maybe I hid something" territory, but I vastly underestimated the interest this game could generate, so it failed.
Therefore, I added an actually non-bundled game with the same ambiguity, and suddenly people were looking for stuff. Still, I did not detect much paranoia, only confusion—plentiful, albeit not particularly strong.
naturally, i had to go all-in, and dropped the most confusing description I could do: I stated four lies as four rules of entry, with a fifth rule hinting at that they may not be true. The result: some were searching for the non-existing hidden link for quite a while.
The most interesting thing is that despite the warning about empty thanks messages, I got slightly more of those than the last few fully public giveaways of the same game, with only one person actually reading the description and quickly deleting it.
The conclusion? Unusual descriptions, as expected, can easily confuse users, but in true mass psychology, if they cannot detect some kind of follow-up, they eventually lose interest. Trying to purposefully confuse them a lot more only has short-term effects, so if you really want to do some large-scale multi-layered puzzle, then either give up or make sure it can be done in a few days at worst, since people will just lose interest.
The moral? Try to believe simple statements a little bit more, so when someone says there is nothing to see there, maybe you should realise that there really isn't anything to see there.
And no, there are no hidden codes in this post either. =)
Also, sorry if someone expected something interesting, but I promised a few users to tell what the hell were those giveaways about, so here it is.
Finally, place your bets how many people open the thread, skip through the wall of text and open the links thinking they are running giveaways. Bonus points if you post a number on those who comment on it.
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